What are you truly afraid of? Not the fleeting rush and pleasant warmth that comes after something unexpected makes you scream. Not the tolerable sick that fills you before an important interview, or the manageable unease when you’re forced to crush a spider with your shoe. I mean that deep, unquenchable disquiet. A building umbra that slowly engulfs your mind. Rationality can only keep it at bay for so long. Eventually the primal call to flee becomes too loud for you to ignore. You succumb, finding whatever escape you can, as the voice of terror consumes you.

For me, deep water is this object of abject fear. The dark, ceaseless depths, filled with all manner of lurking leviathans is far more terrifying to me than any spirit or monster. In a dark room, at least I can rely on the floor beneath my feet. In that vast blue, a creature of unimaginable form could be coming from any direction. And I’d be powerless to stop it.

Oh hey there all my nightmares, how you doin?

This might all seem like a perplexing unfit introduction for Subnautica, a game that at first glance looks more like The Life Aquatic than Jaws. I suspect that many horror gamers—inundated with the flood of survival games alluded to in the biblical end times—will take one look at Subnautica’s bright palate and googly eyed sea creatures and give this one a pass. Well let me be the first to tell you, I came closer to shitting my pants during Subnautica than I did the entire Resident Evil franchise.

I will admit that this has something to do with my previously mentioned crippling fear of the vast uncaring abyss most people refer to as the ocean. But it’s not like Subnautica is trying to help me get over that. Populating the ocean floor are all manner of nasty creatures, most of them ripped straight from my nightmares. I mean seriously, how am I supposed to not be terrified of a gigantic demon eel with a Predator face called the, “Reaper Leviathan?”

Hello there, do you have a moment to talk about our lord and savior?

As should be obvious by this publication date, it took me longer than usual to get through Subnautica. Ghosts, zombies, and hillbilly cultists all be damned, turns out brightly colored fish are my kryptonite. But I’m a serious critic and wanted to make it all the way through the game, leviathans be damned. Now this sentence should confuse you a bit. Yes, Subnautica has an end. This is unusual for an open world survival game, which are usually little more than sandboxes without any real objective other than building the next big thing. Having a story is sometimes included in a more “meta” aspect, but rarely is there a plot you follow to conclusion.

This is just one of several open world survival trends that Subnautica bucks. The most obvious is Subnautica’s vast oceanic world. You play as John G Protagonist, the sole survivor of the Aurora Alterran Capital Ship. Background of your mission isn’t important, all you need to know is that your guy (or gal) got out of the ship on the Lifepod 5 right before the rest of it crashed into the ocean. You plop down somewhere far away, and get to work scavenging and crafting your way to survival.

Yo wassup, you need directions?

In a game like Minecraft, you’re pretty free to just start mining and crafting from the get-go. The ocean of Subnautica is not so hospitable. As you are a land dwelling mammal and not a fish, everything in the environment is a dangerous barrier to your survival. You need water, but the whole ocean is salty. You need food, but the fish mostly swim faster than you. You need shelter, but you can’t just build a cabin on the ocean floor and call it a day. Everything you do in Subnautica is hampered by this harsh and inhospitable climate, and you’ll have to work hard to make it even moderately liveable.

This looks like a nice spot to build my summer home…

Not that this is bad, mind you. So many survival games feel trite once you figure out the easy early tactics, but Subnautica is consistently challenging. Progress is understandable and direct, without much room to skip over entire tiers of equipment with diligent farming. You’ll bust your ass collecting enough resources to get your next oxygen tank, with the reward being you can now explore deeper and more dangerous zones. You’ll never be confused as to what is holding you back, and it’s really just up to you to explore around and figure out what to do next.

Another trend that Subnautica bucks is multiplayer. It’s really rare to have a singleplayer open world survival game, as much of the fun with these games is building with your friends and showing off your sweet designs. While I cannot speak to the intentions of Unknown Worlds, I suspect the lack of multiplayer has to do with the story. I’ll keep this spoiler-free, but the narrative unfurls based on timestamps and what you have discovered. It’s a unique way to tell story that fits well with this style of the game. You always have the sense that things are happening outside of your own little adventure, despite being alone in this world.

Hey, I’m not lonely. I have plenty of friends, that also just happen to be fish.

From its visual design to unique setting, Subnautica is indisputably a bold game. But bold doesn’t always mean good. This is the part where I talk about the combat. Or more appropriately, the lack thereof. Despite a myriad of creatures doing their best to turn you into lunch, the people at Unknown Worlds made the decision that fighting is for those uncivilized heathens that would rather not be turned into poop. Your only offensive tool (outside of some vehicular options) is a survival knife. As you might imagine, this is as useful for taking down a shark as an actual pocket knife would be at taking down a shark. Instead, you’re required to mostly avoid enemies or disable them with shock/repulsor rifles while you go about your harvesting and exploring.

I understand wanting to do things differently, but this choice just baffles me. In exploration games, hostile creatures serve an important role as both obstacles to your exploration and sources of loot. You build the bigger sword so that you can see what cool stuff that giant skeleton with a fez was guarding, and you kill dozens of spiders so that you can turn their webs into a fancy tapestry. It’s a tried and true method, and there’s nothing wrong with it. In Subnautica, not only do you not kill the giant sea terrors, but there’s nothing to gain even if you do. You don’t harvest dead bodies like most survival games, making combat in general pointless.

Y’all are gonna be in real trouble once I throw this adorable defenseless sea critter at you

Say what you will about the game having a unique spin or an environmental message. Bottom line, it’s fucking annoying to try to explore, harvest, and watch my ass all at the same time. I’m not trying to kill these fish because I’m a dick, Unknown Worlds. I’m doing it because I don’t want them to bite my ass off while I’m harvesting the rocks you told me to collect. It’s not functional to require me to swim away screaming or set gravity traps every time I want to just harvest some stupid kelp. Moreover, it’s a massive missed opportunity given the scale of the larger creatures. I’d have loved to build up from knife to spear to gun to eventually a massive warship capable of dealing with these leviathans.

I can already hear some of my cooler friends calling me a frothing mouthed troglodyte for saying this, but not being able to kill stuff severely got in the way of my enjoyment of Subnautica. For all that I could appreciate the brilliant visual design and unique gameplay elements, actually playing it became a chore (ironic criticism for a survival game, which at their core are just a series of chores). I’m sure that some people will truly get lost in the bioluminescent glow of the many wonders Subnautica has to offer. At times, I sure did. But then I was inevitably sucked back out by a passing leviathan reminding me that I’m the game’s bitch, not the other way around.

Game

3.5

Summary

The world of Subnautica is equal parts wonder, mystery, and pure terror. It’s truly remarkable to behold. However, the game’s lack of cooperative play and any form of solid combat takes the teeth out of what could have been a fantastic game. Definitely worth checking out, but doesn’t have the legs of other similar titles.

Prodigy Review – This Kid Is Killer

From the minds of Alex Haughey and Brian Vidal, Prodigy could have easily debuted as a stage play instead of an intimate sci-fi horror film delivered straight to your television. Told with a confident grasp, the story unfolds in only one location with two characters responsible for carrying the entire narrative. Good performances, sure-handed directing, and a solid script highlighting tense moments make the claustrophobic setting seem much bigger in scope. A little telekinesis thrown in to good effect and a creepy killer kid don’t hurt the momentum either.

Under constant surveillance at a remote black site, an aging psychologist named Fonda (Neil) is tasked with assessing a dangerous young girl called Ellie (Liles), who is highly intelligent and possesses supernatural powers. Fonda attempts to inject some humanity into Ellie, but she is cold and calculating and seems to be toying with him at times and the onlookers watching from behind the glass. The back-and-forth between both characters is competitive and often riveting, with Ellie slowly revealing her abilities to her wide-eyed new audience. Wrapped up in a familiar setup, the decision to study or dissect this meta kid is the central question of Prodigy; but the execution of a simple premise is what keeps the story afloat.

On a very small scale, Haughey and Vidal make the setting feel cinematic with crisp images and smart shot selections that help maintain the tension. There’s a strong backbone in place that allows both actors to bounce off of each other in a well-choreographed mental dance as the dangerous game they’re playing begins to unravel.

Several scenes where Elle demonstrates her powers are the standouts in Prodigy with chairs and tables flying and glass breaking to great effect. These sequences diffuse some of the tension for a moment, only to fully explode late in the film when Elle’s emotions unleash. It’s only then that there has been any kind of breakthrough that could possibly help to save her life.

That gets to the heart of the real question posed in Prodigy: Is an extraordinary life still worth saving if it threatens ordinary lives in the process? Also, does the fact that this potential weapon is housed inside the body and mind of a young, lonely girl make a difference to whether it should survive? These questions and how they’re answered make Prodigy a micro-budget standout in the indie horror genre well worth taking the time to rent this weekend if you’re not planning on attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade somewhere.

Prodigy is now available to on iTunes, Amazon, and other On Demand platforms.

Prodigy

3.5

Summary

The questions raised and how they’re answered make Prodigy a micro-budget standout in the indie horror genre well worth taking the time to rent this weekend if you’re not planning on attending a St. Patrick’s Day parade somewhere.

Cold Hell (Die Hölle) Review – Giallo Terror Invades Vienna

I have a serious soft spot in my horror-loving heart for serial killer films. Movies like Seven, The Silence of the Lambs, The Crimson Rivers, and the like draw me in with their cat-and-mouse mentality. Couple those kinds of movies with non-US settings and I’m 100% hooked. So when I was introduced to Die Hölle (aka Cold Hell), which just started streaming on Shudder, I didn’t hesitate to enter this giallo-inspired thriller.

Cold Hell follows Özge Dugruol (Schurawlow), a Turkish taxi driver in Vienna who clearly lives a strained, almost broken life. The fares she picks up verbally abuse her, the Thai boxing gym where she lets go of her anger has banned her after a violent sparring incident, and her family has its own fair share of problems, including infidelity, lack of responsibility, and painful memories of early years.

One night, after coming home from a long shift, Özge opens the window in her bathroom only to see across the way into the home of another woman who is lying on the ground, flayed and burnt, her dead eyes staring at Özge. Stunned into shock, she can only look on before realizing that the man responsible for this woman’s death is standing in the shadows, looking at her. So begins Özge’s journey of terror as this killer makes it his mission to find and end her life.

Cold Hell has an interesting juxtaposition running throughout the film where cinematographer Benedict Neuenfels’ gorgeous visuals are used to highlight the near-squalor and seedy underbelly of Viennese life that Özge lives in. Each scene is bathed in vibrant colors, streetlight reds and neon greens painting the frames. Marius Ruhland, who composed Ruzowitzky’s Academy Award-winning film The Counterfeiters, lends beautiful and thrilling music that knows when to coil up and provide tension before exploding to mirror the chaotic frenzy of the on-screen events.

A direct commentary on religion’s antiquated view of the place and purpose of women, Cold Hell doesn’t shy away from making nearly everyone in this movie a flawed character. People who were unlikable become understandable once the breadth of their circumstances becomes more clear, as is the case with detective Christian Steiner (Moretti), who originally treats Özge with an almost xenophobic attitude only for us to later see that he cares for his dementia-ridden father. While not excusing his previous behaviors, such a revelation gives his irritation and frustration a more justifiable foundation.

When the action strikes, we are treated to breathtaking car chases, blood splashing across the screen, and believable reactions. The characters in this film get hurt and they show it, limping painfully with their cuts and bruises open for the world to see.

The film is certainly not flawless. Some characters feel shoe-horned in and there are rather lengthly segments where the film comes to a crawl. However, the engaging and nuanced performance from Schurawlow easily kept me glued to the screen.

Cold Hell

4.0

Summary

With beautiful music and gorgeous visuals, Cold Hell is an engaging, albeit slow burn, serial killer thriller. This is one film that should not be missed.

Butcher The Bakers Review – Even The Grim Reaper’s Got His Slow Days

When someone passes away, all anyone ever thinks of is the one that’s been lost – no one, and I mean NO ONE gives any consideration to the one responsible for reeling in those wayward souls…I’m talking about The Grim Reaper, and what happens when he hits a bit of a dry spell. Let’s cross on over to the other side and give a look at Tyler Amm’s Butcher The Bakers.

This horror/comedy centers around a couple of slackers (Walsh and Ziggler) who are both whiling away the hours working at a bakery, and their motivation is about as stagnant as frozen tree sap. One day the hapless duo are chosen to perform quite a Herculean task – they’ve got to prevent a recently “discharged” reaper named Dragomir (Behrens) from mass-collecting souls so he can open a portal to another world…yeah, I’m not shitting you. Seems ol’ Drago liked to snag some undocumented souls which didn’t put him in the best graces with the Human Resources department…or whomever the hell these guys report to in the afterlife. His actions have cause him to be ostracized, basically, and this is his way of getting back at the powers-that-be, if you will. Bottom line is this: the reaper’s coming-a-callin’ and he’s not planning on making this trip back and forth solo, if you know what I’m sayin.

The film, acting as part horror-fest and buddy-comedy, hits the mark on more than a few occasions, but falls flat on others – it’s all in the eye of the interpreter. There are some moments of beautifully-shot brutality, and the laughs are both subtle and pronounced, but if you’re not one of those people who dig a meshing of the two styles, you could potentially want to hit the kill-switch on this one in the early stages. Crisp editing and some seriously nifty camera-work are definite pluses, and while the acting could be a bit more stable, it’s adequate enough to support the presentation that it’s sandwiched into. Overall, I could see some horror aficionados giving this a singular peek just to break up the monotony of all that’s out there in the scope right now, but there’s not a whole lot more to go on with this one – if you’re in the mood to dissolve 94 minutes of your time, press play on this one.

Film

2.5

Summary

Horror comedies are far too hit or miss in this day and age, and while this movie tries to resuscitate the dead, it eventually gets dragged off kicking and screaming.